Tuesday, April 08, 2014

Remember when the Syrian Government allegedly used poison gas on its people? And the big rush to war which ultimately Obama ended by accepting the Putin+Syria offer to destroy all its chemical weapons under international supervision?

Seymour Hersh narrates:

Obama’s change of mind had its origins at Porton Down, the defence
laboratory in Wiltshire. British intelligence had obtained a sample of
the sarin used in the 21 August attack and analysis demonstrated that
the gas used didn’t match the batches known to exist in the Syrian
army’s chemical weapons arsenal. The message that the case against Syria
wouldn’t hold up was quickly relayed to the US joint chiefs of staff.
The British report heightened doubts inside the Pentagon; the joint
chiefs were already preparing to warn Obama that his plans for a
far-reaching bomb and missile attack on Syria’s infrastructure could
lead to a wider war in the Middle East. As a consequence the American
officers delivered a last-minute caution to the president, which, in
their view, eventually led to his cancelling the attack.

.....

A series of chemical weapon attacks in March and April 2013 was
investigated over the next few months by a special UN mission to Syria. A
person with close knowledge of the UN’s activity in Syria told me that
there was evidence linking the Syrian opposition to the first gas
attack, on 19 March in Khan Al-Assal, a village near Aleppo. In its
final report in December, the mission said that at least 19 civilians
and one Syrian soldier were among the fatalities, along with scores of
injured. It had no mandate to assign responsibility for the attack, but
the person with knowledge of the UN’s activities said: ‘Investigators
interviewed the people who were there, including the doctors who treated
the victims. It was clear that the rebels used the gas. It did not come
out in public because no one wanted to know.’